


Some Days

by Typey



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1418962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Typey/pseuds/Typey





	Some Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hermitstull](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermitstull/gifts).



“Knock, knock.” 

Claudia stood still where she’d materialized next to the sofa — she was always careful to announce herself when she appeared out of nowhere, but she was particularly aware that, on some days, her agents need that care more than on others.

HG didn’t turn away from the front window, offering a subdued, though sincere, greeting while continuing to gaze out at the bright summer afternoon. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, and the soft sound of Claudia stepping across the room toward HG didn’t feel so much like an interruption as a preface. By the time she had joined the other woman in her vigil, Claudia had pulled a small book out of her back pocket. After a moment standing by HG’s side, she offered it in a wordless question. Helena’s eyes dropped to look at the well-worn cover, rising again to take in the scattered clouds drifting along a light breeze above the wide expanse of the lawn.

“Where would you like to sit?” The query was as soft as her earlier hello and she leaned toward Claudia, brushing against her arm.

“How about we get some sun?” Claudia waited for HG to turn toward the door first, letting the older woman set their pace through the B&B and out the front door. They settled onto the grass, Claudia sitting cross-legged next to HG’s outstretched legs. 

Claudia had never — not since that first July after she’d been made Caretaker and she was struck by a nearly overwhelming pull to check on HG — invaded the other woman’s space on this day. Some years HG would reach out a hand before she picked up the storybook, and other years she would stay completely contained within herself, strain evident in the elegant accent she never lost and in the set of shoulders and the curl of knees up toward her chest. A few years when she opted not to spend her afternoon in the B&B, at the same spot where Claudia had been drawn years ago, and so opted to forego the tradition that had started without either one of them naming the reason why.

This year? With Myka off after an artifact and not due back for several days? Having already sought out some contact? Claudia wouldn’t be surprised if she were wrapped up in HG’s normally strong embrace and held until the sun started to drop below the horizon.

****  
“Yo, Claudia!” Pete bellowed across Artie’s office when he caught sight of her walking in through the umbilicus door. 

“Yes, Pete?” Her raised eyebrow didn’t dampen his exuberance by much, though he did wipe his crumb-coated fingers on his t-shirt before reaching for the folder she’d brought with her. 

“How come you don’t, you know, go all ‘woo-woo’ with the appearing out of nowhere like Mrs. F used to?” He shivered theatrically. “That used to creep me _out_.”

Claudia put on a bright smile and played a moment of keep-away with the folder before relenting, giving him a half-truth she was sure she’d never have been able to get away with if asked by Steve. “I gots my own style, _Agent Lattimer_. And my style says you don’t need to be creeped out by me, just occasionally reminded that not only can I still hack my way through anything but I feel no need to ambush you.”

It was true, Claudia wasn’t Irene Frederic. And it was also true that the Warehouse itself was different when Mrs. F was corralling its sentience. But the whole truth of it was that the idea of materializing, once an awe (and fear) -inspiring illustration of Irene Frederic’s mystical presence, lost its appeal the moment that Claudia felt the power severing her from the Warehouse.

Pete had sat down and was still staring at the single sheet of paper inside the green folder Claudia had brought with her.

“What did you hack through to find this?” The childish glee he carried around with him was completely superseded by something Claudia could only describe as relief. Though she knew there was no way even Pete could have put words to _why_ he was relieved to read the note she’d written him.

Her jagged handwriting, so much less elegant than the old-school script of Mrs. F had ever been, read simply, “Being your best you, one day at a time. Congratulations on twenty years.”

“No hack, Pete. I promise.”

And when Myka and Steve walked back into the office half an hour later, ribbing each other about some near miss with a shelved artifact, Pete would have sworn that Claudia had _just_ disappeared.

****  
 _BA DA-BA, DA-BA BA. BA DA-DA-BA, BA DA-DA-DA DA_

“Oh, come _on_ , Claudia. Really? Again?” Steve wasn’t actually yelling _at_ Claudia, who wasn’t in the room with him. But being woken up...again...by the brassy, drum-backed tones of The A-Team theme song coming from his Farnsworth was enough to pierce the several layers of zen he generally preferred to start the day with.

“Ugh, what’s wrong with the buzzer?” 

By the time he’d flipped it open to ask what could possibly be going wrong at 5:14 am, he knew he was going to have the first eight bars of that damned song in his head all day. Again.

He was still grumbling as Myka’s face popped into distorted view on the display, and she gave him that half-distracted look that told him she didn’t care pretty much at all that he wasn’t happy to get the call. She ignored him dropping the Farnsworth face-up onto his bed and launched straight into the description of the ping that had come in as she was packing up to leave the office after working overnight, including more logistical detail than Steve was capable of following while he tried to pull on jeans and a shirt.

She finished running through Steve’s projected itinerary for the daylong drive and ended the call as abruptly and he’d been woken up by it. He made his way downstairs to grab tea and snacks for the trip, still mildly annoyed at having been rousted to snag an apparently brand-new artifact somewhere off I-90 in one of the parks.

And _of course_ Claudia was sitting there in the kitchen waiting for him. Smiling. Peppy.

Steve scowled at her. She smiled brighter. And hummed. That song.

“Yes, yes. I get it. Second A-Team. Like always.”

“Wow, Mr. Grumpy-pants. I’d’ve thought you’d like being reminded you’re not ever gonna be on a B Team.”

Steve wasn’t sure if his human lie detector would work on a Caretaker — he never would have tried with Mrs. Frederic — but he stood there and focused and asked a very straightforward question.

“Why do you set my Farnsworth to that song?”

Claudia looked at him intently, almost as if she too were trying to decide if he’d be able to sense a lie. After a pause of several moments, she seemed to come to some conclusion.

“It’s not random, you know.”

“But it’s not on a schedule.” Steve was running through his memory, trying to remember exactly when the last time he’d heard the ringtone. It had been the day...it had been the last time he’d been sent out alone to track down an artifact that hadn’t really misbehaved yet. And he narrowed his eyes at Claudia.

“You do this on purpose. You influence...I don’t know, _the world_...to create an artifact so I’ll get sent to go find it so I’ll have to get a message on my Farnsworth so I have to hear the damned song!” He wasn’t raving, not quite. “Isn’t that, like, against the Code of the Caretakers? Mrs. Frederic wouldn’t have messed around like that.”

“I don’t think she would have minded much, actually.”

“But, why?”

“Hey, Jinksy. As annoyed as you are to have it in your head, doesn’t it make you smile just a little bit to think of us before, partners-in-not!crime?”

Steve took a breath and re-centered his thoughts. Which didn’t take much work, because of course she was right. He’d get flashes of a younger, less burdened Claudia in his head, dancing along to the repeated notes of that song.

He nodded slightly and finally returned a smile before furrowing his brow again.

“But I still don’t get the pattern for _why_. What could possibly be important about today?”

At that question, Claudia stood up and walked toward Steve, pausing briefly to put a hand on his arm. Because if she answered aloud — that this year it wasn’t the day she’d once snagged Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, and it wasn’t even the day they’d gone into the field together for the first time as the Second A-Team, that this year it was the date Steve had demolished the metronome — he wouldn’t need his sixth sense to know she was holding something back.

****  
Myka curled her legs up under her, shifting just enough in the loveseat to reach her cup of iced tea on the windowsill behind her. Her wife was at the table, angling herself into the sunlight streaming down on the patio and focused on writing. 

Claudia scuffed her shoes as she made her way toward Myka, catching sight of the book on her lap.

“Has HG noticed what you’re reading?” Claudia sat down next to Myka’s feet, glad for Myka accepting the little bit of contact. 

Myka smiled, both at Claudia’s arrival and at the mention of her still-favorite _War of the Worlds_. “No, but I know how the conversation always goes when she does.” Claudia knew that the next words out of Myka’s mouth would mimic Helena’s. “ ‘Again, darling? You must really have affection for that author.’ And then she winks at me and saunters off.”

Even the sharp laugh from Claudia didn’t pull Helena away from her writing, though, and the two women on the loveseat sat quietly watching her work, watching that facile mind turn ideas into vividly painted landscapes and multi-layered commentary on human nature.

“I know you read it pretty regularly, but I’d think someone as brilliant as HG would notice you always read it today.” 

It had taken Myka a long time to realize that Claudia _knew_ to drop by every year, and then she had spent so much time pondering how Claudia knew. Once she realized that Claudia’s position gave her a real knowledge of everything the Warehouse knew, she felt a pang of sadness — how much of a burden must it be to _know_ , to _feel_. And to be such a favorite of such a powerful — and not always beneficent — entity? What was it about Helena, who was obviously such a favorite at some point, and Irene Frederic and Claudia that the Warehouse saw in all of them, three such different women?

Myka withdrew slightly into herself, and Claudia didn’t turn toward her, affording her friend -- whose emotions were often less obvious to others than they were felt in Myka’s heart itself — a moment to gather herself. Claudia could feel the conflict in Myka, not nearly as strong as it had once been, but present nonetheless; a conflict between wonder — at having the rest of their lives to spend in this place they recognized as home and that surely recognized them as being home -- and worry that one of them would leave again and hide, never find her way out of lies into the truth of their lives, together.

“Well, she’s brilliant, but there are other dates that she keeps in mind. And, you know? I’m kind of glad she’s less concerned with marking time now. Like letting go of keeping track has let her be more fully _here_?”

Claudia nodded in agreement and, still watching Helena, laid her hand on Myka’s knee for a moment. “I think she is so fully _here_ ,” she squeezed the knee briefly, “ because there is nowhere else she’d ever be happy. And she really, truly does know that, Myka.”

Standing, she turned to look at Myka, whose eyes were glistening with tears Claudia knew were so very close to falling. In a shift from their early interactions, though one built slowly over years and no longer unexpected, Claudia reached down to lay her hand on Myka’s head and murmur nearly maternal words of comfort. “She’s going to stay; you’re going to stay. You have fought time and fate and death, and the universe knows it is more _right_ with you two together than it ever could be with you apart.”

A sob, quiet though it was, drew Helena’s immediate attention. Dropping her pen and rushing up from the table, Helena spared Claudia a pointed look before turning her full attention to her crying wife. 

Helena’s words were too soft for Claudia to hear as she walked back into the B&B, but she knew what conversation would follow after Myka’s tears stopped. Helena would ask what had upset her on such a beautiful day, and this year...this year, Myka would tell Helena that they were tears of relief, of contentment. That on this, the anniversary of Helena’s last, permanent, most important, return to the Warehouse, to her, Myka could feel her heart fully healed.


End file.
